Filmmaker and artist Rhys Ernst has joined RadicalMedia’s directorial roster, marking his first representation for commercials and branded content.

His debut feature film, Adam, premiered at the Sundance 2019 Film Festival, won awards at Outfest, Oslo Fusion, and the Mezipatra Film Festival, and was nominated for a 2020 GLAAD award. Ernst was a producer and director on Amazon’s Transparent and created the title sequence for the series. He was nominated for a 2015 Emmy Award for directing and producing the webseries Transparent: This Is Me. In 2016 Ernst teamed up with Focus Features to create the online series, We’ve Been Around.

Ernst has shown work at the Whitney Biennial, the Sundance Film Festival, Oberhausen, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Walker and The Hammer Museums; he has won two Special Recognition GLAAD Awards as well as awards at Outfest, the Chicago International Film Festival, the L.A. and the Seattle Transgender Film Festivals. He has been awarded fellowships from the Point Foundation, Film Independent’s Project Involve, Sundance FilmTwo, and the Universal Directors Initiative. He was awarded the 2015 Point Foundation Horizon Award and the ACLU Liberty Award for his work on transgender representation in the media. 

Ernst recently directed the Facebook commercial “Take On Anything” featuring Laverne Cox. That marked his first spot directorial gig as well as his first time working with RadicalMedia. Ernst’s experience on the project was so positive that he decided to come aboard the company’s roster. He’s looking to do more work with RadicalMedia in commercials and with its other divisions: music videos, studio and entertainment through its offices in Santa Monica, NYC, London and Berlin.

Ernst received a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from CalArts, and lives in Los Angeles.